"Instead the mind flashes bits and pieces of childhood experience, past reading, every movie the writer/creator has ever seen, last week's argument with a phone solicitor - in short everything that lurks in the recesses of the mind." pg. 30

"...writing a meal scene is so difficult, and so inherently uninteresting, that there really needs to be some compelling reason to include one in the story. And that reason has to do with how characters are getting along. Or not getting along" (Foster 8).

"Using other people to get what we want. Denying someone else's right to live in the face of our overwhelming demands. Placing our desires, particularly our uglier ones, above the needs of another." (Foster 21)

"What typically takes place is that we recognize elements from some prior text and begin drawing comparisons and parallels that may be fantastic, parodic, tragic, anything. Once that happens, our reading of the text changes from the reading governed by what's overtly on the page" (Foster 33-34).

"Think of all those movies where a soldier shares his C rations with a comrade, or a boy his sandwich with a stray dog; from the overwhelming message of loyalty, kinship, and generosity, you get a sense of how strong a value we place on the comradeship of the table" (11).

“Well, of course it has to do with sex. Evil has had to do with sex since the serpent seduced Eve. What was the upshot there? Body shame and unwholesome lust, seduction, temptation, danger, among other ills.” (Foster 16).

"There's no such thing as a wholly original work of literature." (Foster 29)

I thought about this fact a lot, even before I read this statement. Everything we write or read has a source somewhere that is similar that inspired it. Every work shares something similar with another writing. Its almost depressing in a way to understand.

To be honest after reading these few sections in the book and even after what we've been doing in class, I'm beginning to believe more and more that this isn't what I want to do. I love English, but I think I would rather just enjoy it however I choose than try to dissect it and find the right and wrongs. How could I become a English teacher and motivate my students to study English when I find myself not really caring about it?

"O'Brien provides us with a wonderful glimpse into the creative process, a view of how stories get written, and a big part of that process is that you can't create stories in a vacuum. Instead the mind flashes bits and pieces of childhood experiences, past reading, every movie the writer/creator has ever seen, last week's argument with a phone solicitor -in short, everything that lurks in the recesses of the mind"(30).

"The three of them, husband, wife, and visitor, ravenously consume the meat loaf, potatoes, and vegetables, and in the course of that experience our narrator finds his antipathy toward the blind man beginning to break down. He discovers he has something in common with this stranger---eating as a fundamental element of life---that there is a bond between them. What about the dope they smoke afterward?"